February was a light month in some ways, only two books, but they totaled 900 pages. Also, February was light on days, with only 28. It all makes sense when you think about it.

My two books both date to my Illinois days but were never read until now.

Ellison’s “The Glass Teat” is a collection, the first of two, of columns he wrote from 1968 to 1971 for an underground weekly, the Los Angeles Free Press. He nominally critiqued TV, a medium for which he wrote. But they range far afield to talk about the tenor of the times. The results are very dated, dispatches from a moment in which society seemed on the brink and in which the Establishment seemed to be winning, but they’re of sociological interest for that reason. Also, he writes a lot about the Smothers Brothers.

Why I never read “The Glass Teat” or its sequel is just one of those things. I’ll get to the second book, “The Other Glass Teat,” in a few weeks.

I won’t say much about Grant’s “Personal Memoirs,” as I’ll have a column in the near future about them. Suffice it to say I was supposed to read the book for a college class but didn’t, and yet kept it all these years because I felt like I really should read it sometime. Now I have.

Have any of you read it? He’s a good writer, a sort of proto-Hemingway as far as direct, unadorned prose, although you have to be interested in the Civil War to slog through his descriptions of four years of battles and troop movements. I liked it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.

What did you read in February, if 28 days gave you time to finish anything?

Above, Kenneth Calhoun talks during his reading Jan. 30 at Barnes and Noble in Rancho Cucamonga. Watch a one-minute video of his reading here.

There aren’t many published novelists who hail from the Inland Valley, but Kenneth Calhoun is one. The native of Upland and Rancho Cucamonga last year saw his debut novel, “Black Moon,” published by Hogarth, an imprint of Crown, to generally positive notices. We’ve corresponded a little since then — we had a mutual friend, the late musician John Harrelson — and met up last Friday for a breakfast conversation during his visit from Boston; that night I attended his hometown reading at Rancho’s B&N.

Wednesday’s column is about Calhoun and his book. There’s a hyperlink in the column to one of his stories, “Nightblooming.”

Happy 2015! Hope your reading year got off to a good start and that whatever goals you set for yourself will be met. My primary goal this year is to read the last stubborn 31 books from my Illinois days, a number that includes a few rereads of Ray Bradbury classics but mostly are books I somehow never got around to reading despite owning them for three decades.

I set off with the idea that I would read these books exclusively either for a couple of months or until finished. To demonstrate my seriousness, I set aside two more recent books that I was midway through when 2014 turned into 2015 and picked up two Illinois books, one for daytime, the other for my nightstand. I followed along on this track until Kenneth Calhoun sent me a copy of “Black Moon” in advance of his Jan. 30 reading at Rancho Cucamonga’s Barnes and Noble.

This was on Jan. 9, and as I decided to write about him, I reluctantly put aside U.S. Grant’s “Personal Memoirs” on p. 80 to veer off on a new track. Couldn’t very well tell him: “I’m afraid I really can’t read your book until August because I promised myself I would read my childhood purchases first.”

“Black Moon” is a dystopian novel about an epidemic of insomnia that claims almost everyone in the populace; the few who aren’t affected fear for their lives, as the sleep-deprived turn violent at the sight of someone who can sleep. It’s a thriller of sorts, although it’s mostly an interior story rather than science fiction, with a lot of ambiguity.

Having read “Black Moon,” I decided to pursue a theme of books with “moon” in the title, as I had another four that I had always thought of clustering.

First I read Philip K. Dick’s “Clans of the Alphane Moon,” which is one of my Illinois books — talk about killing two birds — and is about a moon to which Earth’s crazies had been banished. And now Earth wants the moon back. Dick works through various personal issues about divorce, mental health and the meaning of success while also telling an interesting, and often hilarious, SF story. (After getting kicked out of the house by his wife, the lead character takes up residence in a crummy apartment complex where his neighbors are mostly aliens, including a yellow blob from Ganymede.)

From there I read John Steinbeck’s “The Moon is Down,” from a Steinbeck anthology of short novels. It’s from 1942 and concerns the invasion of an unnamed European village by an unnamed army, and how quiet resistance gums up the invader’s plans. I’d been wanting to read this since visiting the Steinbeck Museum a few years ago. Apparently it was somewhat controversial by making the invaders seem like human beings, and also inspirational to oppressed Europeans. One of my favorite Steinbeck books.

I started John Myers Myers’ “The Moon’s Fire-Eating Daughter,” billed as a sequel to “Silverlock,” although it’s really just in the same mold. It was too clever for its own good, in my view, and after a dozen puzzling pages I gave up and put it in the sell pile.

Lastly, I read H.G. Wells’ “The First Men in the Moon,” partly out of curiosity about the co-star Henry Cavor and his anti-gravity invention Cavorite, which figures into the comic book The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. That’s how Cavor and the narrator get to the moon, by blocking gravity and thus hurtling their capsule into space. Once there, they find a race of beings who live underground in an elaborate civilization. So, no one is going to laud Wells’ predictive powers, and this isn’t as good as “War of the Worlds” or “The Time Machine,” but it was enjoyable.

January, thus, had four moons, with a fifth in only a tiny crescent. “The Moon is Down” would be my favorite, closely followed by “Alphane” and “Black.”

Now, I’m back reading U.S. Grant and wondering if I can read the remaining 500 pages in 28 days. A book on my nightstand will be finished in mid-February, meaning at least one book will appear in this space next month.

Friday’s column is about a familiar name on this blog: Doug Evans, a commenter on Reading Log (and other) posts. He recently completed a 15-year quest to read every Charles Dickens novel. He gives us the highlights and lowlights.

To accompany Wednesday’s column on my reading for the year, I’ve compiled all 68 books I finished last year into the list below.

Numerically speaking, I’ve done better, I’ve done worse. Since I began reading intensively again, I read 75 in 2013, 80 in 2012, 60 in 2011, 52 in 2010 and 58 in 2009. That was five years and 325 books, which now that I see it makes me wish I’d hit 75 last year just to even it out at 400. Well, 393 in six years isn’t shabby.

The photo doesn’t have every book from last year: a few were borrowed and a couple are already in my “sell” pile and weren’t worth the bother of finding. But it’s got most of them.

Below you’ll see some authors represented two or three times, even four in one case. Looking back, I’m satisfied, although I didn’t get to everything I wanted to read. Early in the year, I set three goals: one Shakespeare play, the “Dangerous Visions” SF anthology and “The Three Musketeers.” I accomplished the middle one. Also, in my post last year, I wrote of Twain: “Definitely I’ll read ‘A Tramp Abroad’ this year.” You, er, won’t find that one listed. Well, I’ll definitely TRY to read it this year.

Ringing out the old year, December saw me reading, or finishing off, six books. The stack looks more impressive than it is, as I’ll explain.

To run through these in brief, the two best of the month were “The Crack in Space” and “The Martian Chronicles.” The former, from 1966, takes place in 2080 and involves an overpopulated Earth, an interdimensional rift that promises an off-world place to ship the overflow, and a man who may become the first black president. It’s not one of Dick’s best, but it’s still pretty great. The latter, from 1950, in my opinion is Bradbury’s greatest, a lyrical allegory about western expansion. This is at least my third time through it. Possibly my favorite book.

The Dave Barry book collects some of his hilarious year-in-review pieces. Of the two Poes, “Mystery and Imagination” has all his best stories but, alas, many of his curiosities that have little interest for modern readers. The other one, “Great Tales,” hits most of the highlights of both stories and poems. The Harlan Ellison anthology is for admirers only (I’m one), weighing in at 1,250 pages and more than 3 pounds (says Amazon). You might convert the unconverted with 250 pages of prime Ellison, but only a fan would pick up an overstuffed collection like this. Also, where is his “City on the Edge of Forever” teleplay? I know, in a separate book, but most would consider it essential Ellison.

I’d read a lot of Poe the past year, and a lot of Ellison in recent years, so there was a lot of overlap with books already read, and much of the remaining material had been read over the course of 2014. I made a push to finish them before 2015.

The Bradbury and Dick books date to my childhood, while the others were acquired relatively recently. “Mystery” was bought at North Hollywood’s Iliad Bookshop, “Great Tales” came from Rancho Cucamonga’s fall Big Read, Barry from Amazon and Ellison from Montclair’s Borders (sigh).

In 2014, I read 68 books, not a bad total. (And, crucially, I acquired less than a dozen.) This was the sixth year in a row in which I read 50 or more books, after years of sluggish reading. I expect to write a column soon on my year in reading and to post a list of all the titles and authors. Until then, leave a comment on your December, your experience with any of the above books and your whole year if you like.

On a hike earlier this year in the Hollywood hills, I was impressed by, and envied, one homeowner’s clever garage door mural depicting shelf after shelf of books. Note the (real) newspaper in the driveway!

Repeating a theme from October 2012, I read a volume of “Weird Heroes,” then built a month around other heroic literature. As you can see above, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Fu Manchu, Katniss Everdeen and Rudolf Rassendyll are represented.

“Weird Heroes” was a series of 1970s paperbacks with stories by SF and comics writers, and illustrations by comics artists, about heroes in a pulp magazine vein. As with the first, this second book is better in concept than in reality, but it was a noble effort.

“Exploits of Sherlock Holmes” is an oddity, the first (and for many years, the only) authorized Holmes pastiche, dating to the 1950s and penned in part by one of A. Conan Doyle’s sons. Holmes purists seem to turn up their nose at this, and the book has rarely been in print, but to this non-expert, they seem to capture the flavor of the originals.

“Jungle Tales of Tarzan” is the sixth book in the 24-book series; this one is short stories set in the milieu of the first novel, in the period when Tarzan had yet to meet Jane or any other white people and thought of himself as a hairless ape. The stories of his life with the apes have their charms, although much of the potential for “teen Tarzan” stories is unexplored, and the casual racism is a drag.

“Drums of Fu Manchu” is the ninth in the 14-book series — I’m doing better with the one that with Tarzan — and an enjoyable entry, in which the evil mastermind employs a drug that makes his victims, shortly before their death, think they hear drumming. (For the record, the next book is not “The Guitars of Fu Manchu.” Although that would be awesome.)

“Mockingjay” is, of course, the third and final book in the Hunger Games trilogy. I wanted to read it prior to the movie’s release. It’s largely satisfying, but with some problems. Katniss spends a lot of time hurt, drugged and/or depressed. It’s more realistic, I suppose, that the 16-year-old isn’t leading the revolution single-handedly, but this may be mopier than strictly necessary.

Finally, “The Prisoner of Zenda” is the 1894 classic about a lookalike for the new king of Ruritania who is enlisted to impersonate him when he’s kidnapped by the king’s brother. Tremendously exciting, thoroughly delightful and my favorite of the month by far.

Overall this was a fun month of old-fashioned (mostly) pulp fiction. I have one other “Weird Heroes” book and thus this month may be repeated at some point.

These books were acquired anywhere between 30-plus years ago and last month. “Weird” and “Exploits” date to my teen years and (sigh) were never read until now; “Fu,” “Tarzan” and “Zenda” were bought five or so years ago; and “Mockingjay” was purchased in October.

What have you been reading, and have you read any of the ones above? Are you hoping to get to, or wrap up, any books by year’s end?

Short story writer and translator Lydia Davis won a MacArthur fellowship in 2003 and a Man Booker Prize in 2009. She’s considered one of the finest literary writers working today. The resident of New York state spoke Thursday afternoon at Scripps College, in something of a coup for Claremont. (Of course, we expect no less from the Claremont Colleges.) I left work early to attend. Nearly 100 people were in attendance, mostly students with some faculty and a few regular folks like me.

Most of Davis’ stories are quite short, many only a couple of pages, some so minimalist they’re only a sentence or two long. They’re probably unlike anything else you’ll ever read.

She read for 40 minutes, and by my count she read 27 of her stories in that time, all from her latest collection, “Can’t and Won’t,” which has 122 (I think) stories in its 304 pages. Here’s a review from the New York Times.

Her stories are often drily hilarious, and Davis’ deadpan delivery in her reading made them even funnier. A few are written as letters of complaint to various companies. This mode began with a letter she wrote but never sent to a funeral home “objecting to the word ‘cremains,’” she told us. She never mailed it but instead made it a story.

Another letter of complaint was to a frozen peas manufacturer, in which she wondered why its packaging made its peas look less appealing than they actually are rather than the reverse. “That one I did send,” Davis explained. “I got an answer but it wasn’t satisfactory”; the company sent her a coupon for a subsidiary’s peas.

After the reading, I approached Davis for a signature on my copy of Proust’s “Swann’s Way,” which she translated in 2003 for Viking. In a spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit I haven’t read it — I bought it at a Borders during the closeout sale — but now I’ve got extra incentive. I certainly won’t part with it.

Books read: “The Machineries of Joy,” Ray Bradbury; “Chips Off the Old Benchley” and “No Poems, Or Around the World Backwards and Sideways,” Robert Benchley; “The Tomb and Other Tales,” H.P. Lovecraft; “God and Mr. Gomez,” Jack Smith.

Welcome back, bookworms! (“Thank you, Mr. Allen.”) Time to share what we read in October. I’ll start: Five books, all from favorite authors.

I’ve read a book per year by H.P. Lovecraft for four years now, one by Jack Smith per year for three and the same for Robert Benchley for a couple of years, I think. And Ray Bradbury is, of course, one of my absolute favorites, one whose oeuvre I’ve been rereading; it’d been a year or two since I read anything by him.

“Machineries,” from 1964, is where Bradbury started softening, a process that only picked up momentum from here, alas. Still, it’s got some sharp stories amid the gauziness.

I read Benchley’s “Chips,” a posthumous collection of humorous essays that had been published but uncollected, over a few weeks; it was disappointing. Dusting off my Benchley books, I noticed that “No Poems” had a note inside of the 13 essays I hadn’t read in the slightly shorter British edition that I’d had previously. Why hadn’t I gone ahead and read them when I bought the book three or four years ago? No idea, but I went ahead and read them, completing a second Benchley book this month. The extras weren’t so hot, but the book as a whole is much better than “Chips,” with a lot of prime material.

Lovecraft’s “Tomb” had a lot of marginal material too, as it’s plumped out with some teenage stories and later fragments. But the bulk of the collection is in the Lovecraft mode of atmospheric, slightly purple horror.

Lastly, 1974′s “God and Mr. Gomez” by Smith, the late L.A. Times columnist, is his most famous, telling the story of his and his wife’s decision to commission a Baja vacation home from a man named Romulo Gomez, who is quite the character. People love this book, the only one most people know; my guess is that’s because it hangs together as a book better than collections of random or related columns, and because building a getaway in a foreign country appeals to dreamers. I liked it, but didn’t love it.

As for the origins of these books in my life, “Machineries” dates to childhood, “Chips” may go back 20 years and “No Poems,” “The Tomb” and “Gomez” are relatively recent, probably within the past five or six years. I think “Gomez” came from Bookfellows in Glendale (It’s signed, by the way), “The Tomb” from downtown LA’s Last Bookstore in 2011 and “Machineries” from the long-gone Double R Book Nook in Olney, Ill.

So that was my October. I wanted to read a Dave Barry book, or finish another Poe collection, but that’s okay. I kept pace with four authors and that was satisfying. I have more books by each to read and will steadily make my way through them.

What have you been reading?

By the way, the photo below is extra-boring because the Benchleys don’t have dust jackets; that’s “Chips” on the upper left and “No Poems” at upper right.

Post navigation

About this blog

A roundup of news, history, food, travel and cultural items from around the Inland Valley.

About this blogger

A journalist for nearly 30 years, David Allen has been chronicling the Inland Valley for the Daily Bulletin since 1997 and blogging since 2007. His first book, "Pomona A to Z," was published in 2014.
E-mail David here. Read recent columns here.